Just a minor addition/correction: some viruses enter their target cell as a whole virion (=intact viral particle) after the receptor binding, and only inside the cell release their contents. But I don't think this really changes anything I said above, just a minor tweak to the chain of events in the viral infection :)

Although I got a pretty clear explanation for my previous posting, but I still need a reassurance about some points( talking of HIV virus) mentioned below as some people made me confused on the topic .Please reply by answering correspondinly .

1. Does HIV virus dies/inactivates if sufficiently dried (without any other method of destroying) and is there any possibility It can get reactivated it in future? E.g if I had HIV positive blood (1 or 2 drops) on a piece of cloth , which was dried sufficiently as per its concentration(say 20 days or more), after which I use this portion of cloth to cover someone's bleeding wound, will he/she get infected.i.e dried HIV injected again to bloodstream.

2. Does common household detergents are sufficient to destroy HIV permanently or they just wash/wipe HIV .Do they actually kill/permanently inactivates it ? When people answer that common question of washing HIV stained clothes,they say detergents/soaps kill HIV but usually they are considering the fact that clothes are something which normally donot come in contact with one's bloodstream, but I am asking from the scenerio where these clothes are likely to contact person's bloodtstream directly,Will it be safe to use detergents in this situation? If No then whats the solutio for this ?

1- It depends. All HIV will probably be inactvated after 20 days but it will depends on many things like for example temperature, light exposure and number of viruses in the blood. Very unlikely, but anyway covering someone's bleeding wound with a dirty piece of fabric is probably not a good thing anyway.

2- It depends, again. Once again of the amount of blood in the stain, but also of the detergent. Many laundry detergent contains some bleaching agents and will probably severely damage the viruses. But even if they do not, the simple fact that you remove the stain with water will probably dilute the amount of virus to negligible quantities. So clothes that have been washed should be perfectly safe. And if they went through the dryer or air dried in the sun, then I cannot have any doubt.

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)

Canalon is right I think: it depends. I'll add something little to his answers.

1) After drying, 90 to 99% of the viruses die within hours accroding to CDC. In studies where 100 000 times concentrated amounts of the virus were used (when compared to normal serum levels), HIV could be detected with cell culture methods up to 3 days. This means that with the most sensitive methods they could find some active viruses after 3 days from greatly concentrated samples. With all probability a normal blood-stained cloth or fabric should be non-infectious much sooner than this when dried. If exposed to UV light or heat, the times are much shorter.

In any case, a couple of drops of dried blood should be completely safe after 20 days.

2) Detergents, alcohol, UV light and heat are very effective against HIV. I do not know the exact composition of "common houshold detergents" in your area, so I cannot say for sure how effectively they kill the virus, but the chances are they do it well. In hospitals they consider blood-stained linen to be HIV free after 25 mins of machine wash at 70 C (~160 F) with detergents - so, pretty much the standard washing procedure for white wash should suffice. Actually any normal machine wash program with detergents should be enough to completely remove the chance of infection, but for this I do not have "official" information.

In general, HIV is a very sensitive virus because of its lipid coat (good target for detergents) and ssRNA genome (good target for everything).

You said , it will be dilluted when washing with water, but as HIV is held bonded to and within the dried blood molecules strongly attached to cloth, will dillution work to MOVE and affect the virus to make it dilluted?

> Many facts given by CDC are different from what others say. I am not arguing but I came across so many postings and answers on internet all giving diferent concepts from CDC . e.g see 162 page , 2nd last paragraph on right hand side of this book " Prescription for nutritional healing" which says HIV can stay for many days and that also in inactive state and then becomes infectious again ( also that its not as fragile as normally people think).

The point of washing is to remove dilute dirt. Normal wash will break most of the crust and expose most of the virion. Soap and large volumes of water will dilute a lot. so no problem.

to the upper post1. your first link does not work. And I wish the second did not either. Trust the CDC not the conspiracy theorist loons. I will not even try to describe how wrong they are (even when it comes to web design, first, my head hurt after only 30s of trying to read that).2. Probably the second, but as biohazard and me told you it would probably not matter since HIV is a fragile virus.

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)

Sadly, for some reason, Google decided to block page 160-162 from me.But you are right, no conspiracy theory in here. Just a repertoire of all the woo and stupid of alternative medicine that never proved its value beyond placebo at best, and sometimes actively hurt the convert. A great read if you have money and possibly health to waste.Statistically there is no way to differentiate the potential healing value of anything in this book from anything that would have been randomly typed by a monkey on a computer. This might be popular, but so is superstition and I would not recommend trusting at all. The CDC advices are backed by scientist and understanding of what HIV is and does. This is backed by ignorance and superstition. Trust what you want, I know what I would do.

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)

No doubt, outside of a living cell, a virus is an inactive particle, but within an appropriate host cell it becomes active. Some animal viruses, for instance, produce latent infections, in which the virus persists in a quiet state, becoming periodically active in acute episodes, as in the case of the herpes simplex virus.